Re: The demise ofa fiction

George, I appreciate your point here, and I can see how such a distinction
could be made. What concerns me, though, is that the "separate spheres"
view seems deaf to the real cultural and spiritual context in which we live
our lives. For better or worse, I guess worse, the common perception in our
culture is that the only "knowledge" that counts is the "empirical"
knowledge delivered by "science."

Though you recognize here the limits of "science" as you define it, many
scientists -- certainly many scientists who are visible to the general
public -- do not. The result is that in our popular culture, "science" is
what counts as "objective" knowledge, while any other kind of truth claim is
relegated to the "subjective" realm. Every reasonable and educated person
is expected to believe what "science" says, or else to suffer the derision
of the cogniscenti, while everyone is free to believe whatever they want
about ethics, morality, God, and such.

When you couple this with our establishment clause jurisprudence, and add to
the mix litigious groups like the ACLU that, for better or worse (again I
think worse), want to erase any traces of religion from public life, you get
the volatile mix that we now have.

I've discussed this with some science-minded friends, and their typical
response is something like "that's a cultural or political problem outside
the scope of science." To which I would say, balderdash! It seems to me
that if you're going to take a position on what constitutes "knowledge"
within a given field, and that field is a vital part of common public
life, you are responsible for managing the consequences. I see lots of
harangues from professional scientists -- many here -- against diluting the
purity of science with ideas from other spheres, but it's incredibly
disconcerting to see almost nothing about the limits of science if it is
limited to the methodolical naturalist's sphere, even less about the value
of other spheres of knowledge, and almost nothing about how all these
spheres of knowledge ultimately integrate.

This last point, integration, is even a bigger concern for me than the
cultural and political ones. As ASA members, don't we all generally agree
that there is indeed ultimately something called Truth? Shouldn't we be
more concerned about Truth than about the boundaries that have grown up
around some human method of inquiry over the past couple of hundred years?
Shouldn't we look for a more wholistic concept of "knowledge" than one which
restricts areas of inquiry into hermetically sealed compartments? Sometimes
it seems that the discussions here are more concerned about preserving a
privileged domain than about Truth. (I hope that last sentence doesn't come
across as argumentative or snarky. This is one of the deep concerns I
wrestle with as I continue to formulate my own views about the meaning and
place of "science," ID, and such).

On 1/9/06, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
> Methodological naturalism is not a "fact" but a procedural rule of
> science. We can violate it and make statements about God's action in the
> world which are true, but they are simply not useful scientifically.
>
> & although it sometimes isn't acknowledged, methodological naturalism
> implies a limitation of the competence of science. Most obviously, a
> science limited to natural causes cannot explain how nature itself came into
> being. When we confront that limit, the thing to do is simply to recognize
> that that limit has been encountered & to look to religion if we want to go
> beyond it. It only confuses matters to call that religion "science," as the
> Kansas school board wants to do.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Vernon Jenkins <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net>
> *To:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Monday, January 09, 2006 5:54 PM
> *Subject:* The demise ofa fiction
>
>
> Reading the recent exchanges between Bill Green and David Campbell it
> occurs to me that the claim to be both Bible believer and committed
> methodological naturalist is a contradiction in terms; for how can one who
> accepts the possibility of supernatural intrusion into our domain of space
> and time seriously claim immunity for the scientist? Obviously, to practise
> science _with confidence_ one needs either to reject belief in the
> supernatural, or to assume that (by some kind of unwritten agreement)
> it remains outside the laboratory door. But, desirable as this hope may be,
> how can the Christian assume that it _must_ be so? Isn't God sovereign? -
> His 'own man', so to speak? Doesn't He 'call the shots'? Who are we to
> happily collaborate with those who - for their own atheistic ends - have so
> deified the _hypothesis_ of methodological naturalism that it is now widely
> acclaimed as unassailable fact?
>
> Of course, it requires but one proven instance of supernatural activity
> (as determined using those time-honoured principles familiar to scientists)
> to demolish this fiction. Such an instance is now before us, viz the
> coordinated structure of numerical geometries that we find indelibly
> associated with the Bible's opening Hebrew Words.
>
> Vernon
> www.otherbiblecode.com
>
>
>
Received on Wed Jan 11 08:38:08 2006